David Lebovitz has done for chocolate what Bruce Lee did for kung fu – he has demystified a formerly secretive art and made it accessible to the general public. Ok, so I never managed to learn kung fu (take that sad image out of your minds right now), but I have learnt to do clever things with chocolate. And like the Dragon, in Lebovitz’ case, it’s all about technique. His recipes aren’t overly complicated, but their success or failure depends entirely on execution.

A wonderful case in point is the recipe for hot chocolate in his new book The Sweet Life in Paris (which is a great read, despite its mildly-annoying-but-very-French deckle cut finish). It’s a simple recipe; just milk, chocolate and a pinch of salt. However, made correctly, it is creamy, smooth and delicious – we’ve grown quite addicted to it as a restorative tonic and now keep a small bottle in the fridge at all times for emergencies.

Last night, I whipped up a batch of Lebovitz’ dark chocolate biscotti. The original recipe is on his blog and I was planning to reproduce it here, until I realised that I really couldn’t explain the methodology any better than he has. For what it’s worth, I used Callebaut dutch cocoa in mine, which resulted in an extra dark cookie. They’re very grown up, yet oddly reminiscent of the politically incorrect Golliwog biscuits of my childhood – while completely different in shape and form, the flavour jogs something in the recesses of my brain (I think it’s the crispness combined with the cocoa). Some of the biscotti were treated to a coating of tempered chocolate, which made them ridiculously moreish, particularly with a hot cup of tea.

I now own two of Lebovitz’ books – The Sweet Life in Paris and The Great Book of Chocolate. They’re informative, entertaining and occasionally hysterically funny. He also writes a great blog, where it’s easy to while away a couple of hours, particularly if you’re a seasoned virtual traveller like moi. Just be careful, though, or you’ll end up with an expensive chocolate addiction like the rest of us…

Like this:

I’m still playing with my David-Lebovitz-via-Valrhona-inspired caramelised white chocolate. Today I discovered a way to temper it, so that I could mould it into bars. I’m actually pretty excited about this!

I made a big batch of the CWC (as it’s now known here), then spread some of it onto a sheet of parchment paper. Once it set hard, I broke it up, retempered it with more white chocolate callets, then poured it into block moulds. They’re gorgeously glossy right now, but I’m not sure if they’ll hold their temper overnight. Then again, I’m not actually sure they’ll last that long given the way Big Boy hoovered a small block when he got home from school. Now he wants a caramelised white chocolate milk shake and Pete still wants to make CWC icecream!

Edit 12/06 : raced out of bed at 5.30am to check the bars (how sad am I?) and they haven’t bloomed overnight! They’re still glossy and shiny and tempting, no white streaks of cocoa butter to be seen. Hmmm. I wonder if it’s too early to eat some…

The amazing, irrepressible David Lebovitz has been making caramelised white chocolate. It’s just so wrong and yet…I can’t stop eating it. I made some last night with half a kilo of Callebaut white callets. It is ludicrously good and far too easy to make. Thankfully it set rock hard in the jar overnight, or I’d be eating it now for breakfast. Having said that, it microwaved to gooey perfection in under a minute.

In case you’re wondering – the photo above is just white chocolate – nothing added or subtracted. The chocolate turns a rich toffee brown in the oven as the sugars in it darken and caramelise. Pete wants to make it into icecream, but I reckon we should just eat it with a spoon!